David Byrne said it best:
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wifeAnd you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”
Okay, David Byrne might have sung it best (that couplet is from the song “Once In A Lifetime”) and maybe he wasn’t thinking about evolution. Or was he? Anyway, the question remains an important one.
How did we get here?
The work is ongoing, but new discussions are focusing on the “enigmatic Denisovans.” That’s a quote form Eric Ralls’ excellent recent story on earth.com and based on the work of Professor Christopher J. Bae from the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Department of Anthropology in the College of Social Sciences. (A more scholarly write-up can be found on the Nature Communications website.)
The Denisovans are a potentially new member of the human family tree and the work and analysis revolves around studying the fossil record from the late Middle and early Late Pleistocene (300,000 to 50,000 years ago). For a quick review, we recommend this overview video about Denisovans on the “History with Kayleigh” YouTube channel.
To put it simply, there is more diversity on the family tree than we first thought and the research is suggesting that Homo juluensis included the elusive Denisovans. (The species is named after the cave where evidence was first discovered; the cave itself was named after the Russian hermit—named Denis or Dyonisiy in Russian—who lived there in the 1700s.
In 2010, scientists discovered an unusual finger bone and teeth in the cave. And DNA analysis showed that the bones were from a distinct group of hominins, although related to both Neanderthals and modern humans. In fact, the evidence suggests that Denisovans interacted with Neanderthals and modern humans and shared survival skills, too.
“The classification of Homo juluensis offers a new lens through which scientists can investigate the origins, migrations, and interconnections of ancient human populations in Asia,” writes Ralls.
But wait, as they say, there’s more.
It was widely believed the Denisovans inhabited Central Asia. Now, some scientific eyes are turning to Iceland and whether some Denisovan genes, in the words of Science Daily, “went astray.”
In studying the DNA of Icelanders, researchers found “significant fragments” of Denisovan genetic material.
“So how did these genes end up in Islanders' DNA? And when?” asked Science Daily.
There are two theories:
First, that Neanderthals had children with Denisovans before they met the Homo Sapiens. This would mean that the Neanderthals with whom Homo Sapiens had children were already hybrids, who transferred both Neanderthal and Denisovan genes to the children.
Second, that Homo Sapiens met Denisovans long before they met Neanderthals. So far, it has been thought that modern humans met Neanderthals and had children with them first, and not until tens of thousands of years later did they have children with Denisovans.
As one scientist stated it, “both explanations are equally likely, and both explanations will be scientific news.”
We will be here, eagerly awaiting, when one conclusion (or another) is reached. One thing is certain—the scientists will follow the fossil and DNA trail until they know for sure.
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